Labour Rebellions of the 1930s in the British

Caribbean Region Colonies

Richard Hart
Labour Rebellions of the 1930s in the British Caribbean
Region Colonies
Published 2002 jointly by Caribbean Labour Solidarity and the Socialist
History Society.
ISBN of printed version: 0 9537742 3 6

About the Author

Richard Hart was involved in trade union activities

in the British Caribbean region colonies for many years. A member of the
Labour Committee formed in Jamaica in 1938 by Norman Manley to assist
William Alexander Bustamante in the formation of a trade union, he had the
responsibility of drafting a model trade union constitution. He was in 1939
the Secretary of the Trade Union Advisory Council, which subsequently
became the Trade Union Council. President of the Jamaica Government
Railway Employees Union from 1942 until its merger with other unions in
1948, he was a Vice President of the Trade Union Congress of Jamaica from
1949 to 1953. On the wider regional plain he was Assistant Secretary of the
Caribbean Labour Congress on its formation in 1945 and its Secretary from
1946 until its demise in 1953.

The British Caribbean Region Colonies

In the 1930s British colonies were spread right across the Caribbean region.
In the west, on the Central American mainland, was Belize (then British
Honduras). In the centre-north, some 600 miles east of Belize, lay the largest
island Jamaica (100 miles south of Cuba), the tiny Cayman Islands (just off
Cuba’s south coast) and the chain of numerous small Bahama and Turks &
Caicos Islands (off the northern coasts of Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican
Republic). Some 1000 miles to the east, forming the boundary of the
Caribbean Sea, lay an arc of small islands stretching southwards from the
British Virgin Islands for over 400 miles. These were, from north to south
(separated mid-way by two French islands) St Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat,
Dominica, St. Lucia and Grenada. About 100 miles to the east of this chain
lay Barbados. 100 miles to the south (just off the northern coast of South
America) lay the larger island of Trinidad and its associated small island
Tobago. 150 miles to the south-east of Trinidad and just outside of the
Caribbean Sea lay Guyana (then British Guiana), on the South American
mainland.

Except in the two mainland territories, most of the numerous aboriginal

inhabitants had perished within a relatively short time after they had
discovered Columbus. Although they were not exterminated in the mainland
colonies. in the islands only a few hundred descendants of the Amerindians
have survived in Dominica and Trinidad. The overwhelming majority of the
present day populations are descended, or partly descended, from the millions
brought from West Africa to the region as slaves or the hundreds of
thousands imported from India as indentured (contract) labourers after the
abolition of slavery.

Populations and Class Structure

In 1936 the populations of these colonies, as recorded by the Colonial Office
were: Jamaica – 1,138,558; Trinidad & Tobago – 412,783; Guyana –
332,898; Barbados – 188,294; the Windward Islands of Grenada, St Lucia
and St Vincent (combined) – 209,846; the Leeward Islands (Antigua, St
Kitts, Montserrat, British Virgin Islands) together with Dominica (later
transferred to the Windward Islands colony) -139,759.1 The population of
Belize, 98,453 in 1962,2 was probably less than 80,000 in 1936. Although the
mainland colonies were much larger than the islands, they were, except in
their coastal areas, sparsely populated.

In Jamaica in the week ending 12 December 1942, 505,092 persons were

classified as gainfully occupied. Of these 283,439 were wage earners of
whom 88,981 were classified as unemployed. This did not include 50,528
between ages 15 and 24 who had never had a job. Classified as working on
their own account were 153,274 persons. Included in this number were
individual peasants or small farmers,3 but, because of the high level of
unemployment, this category was abnormally large. This was because it
included many enterprising persons seeking work but unable to get a job who
had resorted to self-employment as a means of survival. Social structures in
the other colonies were fairly similar.

In the colonies where the labour rebellions occurred, workers and

unemployed workers who participated were to be found both in the urban
centres and the other areas where the principal industries were located. In
Antigua, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Trinidad the largest
employer of labour was the sugar industry. In Trinidad the oil industry, in
Jamaica banana plantations and in Guyana bauxite production also employed
many workers. In Belize the industry employing the largest number of
workers was logging and lumber production.

In the 1930s, apart from the regional organisations established by the sugar
manufacturers and the governing bodies of the sport of cricket, there was
little or no inter-colony contact. There had been migration to Trinidad of
workers from the smaller eastern Caribbean islands, particularly Grenada, for
employment in the oil industry. There had also been migration from these
islands and Barbados to Guyana. But apart from these migrations, the
workers in each colony had remained isolated from their counterparts in the
other colonies.

Franchise, Political Control and Labour Representation

In the 1930s, although legislatures existed in these colonies, few if any

workers enjoyed the right to vote in elections. The franchise was available
only to persons who possessed property owning or income qualifications
which limited the size of the electorate to approximately ten percent of the
adult populations. The colonial constitutions provided that effective political
control remained in the hands of Governors appointed by the British
Government.

Prior to 1932 the only colonies in the region in which it had been lawful to
form a trade union had been Jamaica and Guyana, but the legislation did not
permit peaceful picketing of employers’ premises and the Jamaican
legislation did not protect trade unionists from actions for breach of contract
in the event of strikes. Although illegal, the Trinidad Workingmens
Association (TWA) had since its formation in 1897, in addition to its other
functions, engaged in trade union activities. In 1932, on the advice of
Secretary of State Lord Passfield (formerly Sidney Webb), legislation similar
to the Jamaican statute was enacted in Trinidad & Tobago, Grenada and St
Lucia but trade unions continued to be illegal in the remaining British
colonies in the region.

The first attempt to establish extra-territorial contacts between workers’

organisations had been made in 1926 when the British Guiana Labour Union
convened a labour conference in Georgetown. This had been attended by
representatives of the TWA and a trade union in the neighbouring Dutch
colony of Suriname. There had been no organisational follow-up and no
regional trade union organisation had been established. A similar conference
was convened in Trinidad in 1938, with a similarly limited attendance and no
follow-up arrangements.

Common Causes of Working Class Unrest

The principal causes of working class unrest and dissatisfaction were the
same throughout the region: low wages; high unemployment and under-
employment; arrogant racist attitudes of the colonial administrators and
employers in their relations with black workers; lack of adequate or in most
cases any representation; and, no established structure for the resolution of
industrial disputes by collective bargaining. Another factor increasing general
distress and dissatisfaction regionally was the world economic crisis which
had started in the USA in 1929 and by the early 1930s was having a residual
effect internationally. The fact that the grievances caused by these factors
existed in all these colonies explains why, despite the lack of inter-colony
contacts, the labour rebellions of the 1930s were an inter-colony
phenomenon, sweeping like a wave across the region.

An account of the origins and development of the Caribbean working class,

published some years ago, gave the following description of the situation as it
was at the beginning of the 1930s :

“What appeared on the surface was a picture of general working class

subservience and docility. Surveying the scene, colonial officials,
representatives of the big foreign owned enterprises and the local employers
and upper middle classes generally felt confident and secure. … Sullen
resentment and dissatisfaction were, nevertheless, swelling steadily among
the working people and the unemployed in all the British colonies in the
Caribbean area. By the middle years of the decade the situation was like a
cauldron of liquid slowly coming to the boil, with isolated early warning
bubbles here and there disturbing the apparently placid surface.”4

The Early Warnings

The earliest manifestations of the growing unrest occurred in Belize,

Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica. In Belize in February 1934 a group calling
themselves the “Unemployed Brigade” emerged in Belize Town, then the
capital. The Police Superintendent reported:

“Leaders were appointed and a march round the town arranged. After the
march the leaders met the Governor by appointment. The leaders were men
of the artisan and labouring classes. … The deputation represented to the
Governor that their families were starving because the men could not get
work.”5
The Governor promised immediate relief for the hungry and announced that
the unemployed should register at the Belize Town Board, but the deputation
was not satisfied as they wanted a cash dole of $1.00 per day. Nevertheless,
1,100 men and 300 women registered. It was at this point that Antonio
Soberanis Gomez, a barber by trade who had been holding public meetings
expressing popular dissatisfaction, denounced the leaders of the Unemployed
Brigade as being insufficiently militant, and emerged as the most popular
leader. He organised a petition demanding that the Government find work for
the unemployed at $1.50 per day. In August 1934 he led a protest march of
about 3,000. In September he organised a strike of stevedores in Stan Creek,
the second largest town, which won an increase of pay from 8 cents to 25
cents per hour.6

Soberanis continued to organise mass meetings in various parts of the country

and played a decisive part in channelling the growing unrest into mass action.
The Governor described his speeches as “offensive and inflammatory”.7 New
legislation prohibited processions without police permission and a Seditious
Conspiracy Law was enacted so that, as the Attorney General explained,
“Soberanis could be successfully prosecuted for sedition”.8

In May 1935 there was a strike of Railway workers at Stan Creek, in the
organisation with which Soberanis was involved. Police reinforcements were
brought in from Belize City and the intimidated strikers returned to work.
Soberanis was prosecuted for using seditious language at a public meeting on
1 October in Corozal. The Governor explained his reasons for selecting a
particular Magistrate to conduct the trial: “One of my reasons for sending
[Magistrate E A] Grant to try ‘Tony’ was that he was a black man. I did not
want the trial to be a black v. white affair”. He wanted, said the Governor,
that Soberanis should be “put away for a good long sentence”. Soberanis was
also charged before the Supreme Court with attempting to “bring His Majesty
into hatred, ridicule and contempt”.

The trials of Soberanis aroused country-wide interest and workers contributed

money to provide him with legal representation. All public meetings while
the trials were in progress were prohibited. From the Governor’s point of
view however the results were unsatisfactory. The Supreme Court acquitted
him and in the Magistrate’s Court at Corozal he was only fined $85 for using
insulting words.9

In 1933 and 1934 there was labour unrest in Trinidad. On 19 June 1933 a
hunger march took place in the capital Port of Spain, organised by a group
calling themselves the National Unemployed Movement. The demonstrators
demanded relief work for the unemployed and the restoration of rent controls
which had been abandoned. The same group organised a similar, but larger
march of some 400 to 500 in the following year.10

A number of demonstrations also occurred on sugar estates. On 6 July 1934

some 800 workers from the Brechin Castle and Esperanza plantations
demonstrated in front of the warden’s office at Couva, complaining of lack of
work. Violence erupted when the police attempted to keep the demonstrators
away from the business and commercial area. There was looting and twelve
persons were arrested. On Esperanza the Head Overseer was attacked and
injured. At Caroni Estates an overseer was injured and the offices of the
company were stoned and set on fire. Similar incidents occurred on other
plantations.11

The legislature, consisting of the Governor presiding, 12 officials, 6 persons

nominated by the Governor and only seven members elected on a restricted
franchise, was sufficiently alarmed by the demonstrations to appoint a
commission of enquiry.12 In 1935 the Government also set up a Wages
Advisory Board. One of the members appointed on this Board was Captain
Arthur Cipriani, President of the TWA, which in 1934 he had re-named the
Trinidad Labour Party.

In Guyana the workers on Plantation Leonora on West Coast, Demerara,

came out on strike in September 1934. This was followed by a strike on
Plantation Uitflugt, during which 2,000 workers converged on the factory to
prevent the start of milling operations. No sooner had work resumed there
than strikes occurred on two other Booker Brothers plantations – De
Kinderen and Tuschen. Another strike occurred on Plantation Leonora in
September 1935, in support of a demand that wages, which had been reduced
by one penny in the shilling in 1930, be restored to the previous level. Other
strikes in 1935 occurred at Plantations Vryheids Lust, La Bonne Intention,
Enmore, Lusignan, Ogle and Farm.13

On 13 May 1935 a strike of workers loading bananas at Oracabessa in St.

Mary, Jamaica, developed into what the newspaper Plain Talk, a new voice
of protest edited by former Garveyite Alfred Mends, described as a riot. The
workers blocked the roads to prevent strike breakers from being brought in
and cut power lines. Armed police were sent to the town from
Kingston.14 On 21 May there was a strike of port workers in the town of
Falmouth in Trelawny. This also developed into a riot when the use of strike
breakers was threatened and one worker was killed by police gunshot.15 In
Kingston, in that same month, banana loaders in the port went on strike and
organised a march. On the second day of the strike the police opened fire on
the crowd, wounding a woman.

In June 1935 the Jamaica Permanent Development Convention, a Garveyite

organisation, held a public meeting at which it announced plans for the
formation of a labour union. Nothing came of this proposal but, in May 1936,
the Jamaica Workers and Tradesmens Union was launched with A G S
Coombs as President and Hugh Clifford Buchanan as Secretary. Coombs, an
ex-soldier and policeman, described himself as “a peasant of low birth, very
limited education and a very poor man”.16 Buchanan was a master mason
and Jamaica’s first active Marxist.17

Sugar Workers Rebel in St Kitts in 1935

On 28 January 1935 cane cutters refused to start reaping the new sugar cane
crop on the Shadwell plantation, on the outskirts of Basseterre, the capital of
St Kitts. The employers had offered work at 8 pence (16 cents) per ton, a rate
which the workers had been forced to accept under protest for reaping the
previous years’ crop. News of their refusal to work spread quickly to
adjoining plantations where workers also refused to start the crop. A new
spirit of determination to fight for their rights spread throughout the island as
groups of workers went from plantation to plantation on foot. They prevented
work from starting or, in the few places where the cutting of canes had
commenced, they persuaded the workers to cease work. A general strike of
sugar workers very soon developed.
Workers at the island’s sugar factory also came out on strike, demanding a
wage increase. Their wages had been reduced by one penny in the shilling in
1930 and subsequently by a further one penny. On 29 January some 200 to
300 workers, some armed with sticks, entered the yard at Buckley’s
plantation. The manager and overseer ordered them to leave but they refused
to do so. Stones were thrown and, either before or after the stone throwing –
it is not clear when, the manager fired his gun into the crowd injuring several
workers. Armed police arrived under the command of a former British Army
major, but the workers refused to obey his order to disperse, demanding that
the manager be arrested.

At about 6 p.m. a contingent from the local military force arrived at

Buckleys. The crowd had by then swollen to four to five hundred. The Riot
Act was read and the military fired into the crowd. Two labourers and the
factory watchman were killed and eight others were wounded. Next day a
British warship arrived and marines were landed. A period of intimidation
followed. Thirty-nine strikers were arrested and six were sentenced to terms
of imprisonment of from two to five years.18

The Labour Rebellion in St Vincent

In October 1935 the Governor of the Windward Islands arrived in St Vincent

to preside over a meeting of the Legislative Council. At that time the Council
consisted of a majority of colonial officials and persons nominated by the
Governor, with only of a minority of members elected on the restricted
franchise. On 15 October the Governor, in order to add to the Government’s
revenues, introduced a measure to increase customs duties on a number of
items of popular consumption. It was also the Government’s intention to
maintain the high local tariff on sugar which had previously been imposed to
assist the sugar producers at the consumers’ expense. The legislature was
scheduled to meet again on 21 October to approve the Governor’s proposals
and during the intervening week there was mounting opposition to these
proposals which would increase the cost of living.

On the morning of 21 October a crowd gathered in Kingstown, the capital, in

front of the shop of George McIntosh, a popular Town Councillor. They
wanted him to inform the Governor of their opposition to the duty increases
and to present to him their other grievances about lack of employment and
general poverty. McIntosh informed the crowd that the Governor had agreed
to receive him at 5 p.m., but they were suspicious that this was a trick to
avoid hearing their grievances because His Excellency usually left the island
before that hour, immediately after the last session of the Legislative Council.
There was an angry demonstration outside the Court House where the
Council was meeting, some of the demonstrators having armed themselves
with sticks and stones. Some demonstrators forced their way into the
building.

Windows of the Court House were smashed and motor cars of some officials
were damaged. There were shouts of “We can’t stand more duties on food or
clothing” and cries of “We have no work. We are hungry”. The alarmed
Governor adjourned the session of the Council. As he and other officials
emerged from the Council Chamber, the Governor was pushed and struck
and the Attorney General, who had drafted the tax measures, was cuffed by
an enraged protester. In the ensuing riot a crowd broke into the prison
releasing the ten prisoners there and the business premises of F A Corea, a
member of the Council and the island’s largest merchant and plantation
owner, were ransacked.

Following the arrival of an armed police force, the Riot Act was read and the
crowd was fired upon. One person was killed and several were injured. News
travels fast in a small island and the rioting soon spread to Georgetown,
twenty miles to the south, and Chateaubelair the same distance to the north.
Telephone wires were cut and several bridges were destroyed. Military
“Volunteers” were rushed in from other islands and armed police and
Volunteers were posted to guard the cable and wireless station and the
electricity plant. At midnight on 21 October a British warship arrived. On 22
October a state of emergency was proclaimed.

Though the disorder in Kingstown had subsided by the end of the first day,
disorders in the rural areas, where many plantation workers were involved,
continued for the next two days. The police met particularly strong resistance
at Byera’s Hill, Campden Park and Stubbs, where demands for land and for
higher wages were heard. The state of emergency was continued for three
weeks.19
In Kingstown the working class leader who had played the principal
agitational role was Sheriff Lewis. He was popularly known as “Selassie”
because of his advocacy of the cause of Ethiopia, then being invaded by Italy.
Bertha Mutt, who was also mentioned in a similar role, was known as
“Mother Selassie”. These nick-names are interesting because they show that,
even in a far away Caribbean island, there was concern about an invasion by
a European power of this independent African kingdom. On 23 November
George McIntosh, who had by then become the acknowledged leader of the
workers, was arrested on a charge of treason felony, although he had tried to
restore calm during the disturbance. The case against him collapsed at the
preliminary examination before the Magistrate.20

Unrest and Intimidation in St Lucia

At the end of 1935 there was a strike of coal loaders in St Lucia. With the
recent events in St Kitts and St Vincent very much in mind, the Governor
mobilised the local military force and called upon the British Government for
reinforcements. A warship was quickly on the scene and for several days and
nights marines patrolled the streets of the capital Castries and some rural
areas. At night the ship’s searchlights illuminated the city. Faced with this
massive show of force, the strikers returned to work, to await the report of an
official commission of inquiry set up to consider their claims for wage
increases. Supported by so much military might, the commissioners felt
sufficiently secure to reject all their demands.21

The Labour Rebellion in Barbados

Clement Payne, who had been born to Barbadian parents residing in Trinidad,
returned to Barbados in March 1937. Shortly after his arrival he began to
hold street meetings at Golden Square in Bridgetown, the capital, at which he
announced his intention to form a trade union. He had made arrangements to
rent a hall on 1 May to celebrate international labour day, but when the
proprietor discovered his purpose the arrangement was cancelled. Payne’s
meetings attracted increasingly large crowds of workers. Others who assisted
him with his plan to launch a trade union were F A Chase, Olrick Grant,
Mortimer Skeete, Israel Lovell and Darnley Alleyne.
Alarmed at these activities, the Government took action. On entering the
island Payne had declared that he had been born in Barbados. This proved to
be untrue, although he had believed it to be true. He was nevertheless
prosecuted for knowingly making a false declaration and fined £10, but
appealed and was granted bail. On the next day he led a march to
Government House, demanding to see the Governor. Payne and several
others were arrested and he was refused a renewal of his bail. While in
custody awaiting trial he was served with a deportation order.

Payne had been unrepresented at his trial as he had been unable to pay the fee
of Grantley Adams, the lawyer he had sought to employ. His followers
however took up a collection and raised the money to pay Adams to represent
him at the appeal. The appeal, heard on 26 July, was successful, but Payne
was not released from custody. Instead, during the night, he was secretly
placed aboard a schooner and deported to Trinidad. The Trinidad police were
waiting for him and arrested him on a charge of possessing prohibited
literature. When it became known that Payne had been deported there was an
angry public reaction. On the night of 27 July a large crowd was addressed by
his principal supporters. Next day there was widespread rioting in the city:

“Shop windows were smashed, cars were pushed into the sea, passers by
were attacked, police patrols, caught unarmed and unawares, fled beneath a
hail of bottles and stones … During the next two days the ‘trouble’ spread to
the rural parishes where a few lawless souls stoned cars on the highways
while bolder spirits among the hungry poor took advantage of the general
fear and confusion to break into shops and raid sweet potato fields … Shops
remained closed, work came to a standstill in town and country alike.”22

At the time of the disturbances a strike at the Central Foundry was in

progress. On 28 July the lightermen, whose importance can only be
appreciated when it is remembered that at that time a deep water pier had not
yet been constructed, came out on strike. They resumed work on 4 August
when their demands were met, but sporadic strikes and threats of strikes
occurred in several other work places. The Government acted ruthlessly in
suppressing the general unrest and disorder. On several occasions the police
used firearms.
The final toll was 14 dead, 47 injured and more than 500 arrested. Payne’s
principal supporters were accused of creating “discontent and disaffection
among His Majesty’s subjects” and of promoting “ill-will and hostility
between different classes” and prosecuted for sedition. Grant and Skeete were
sentenced to ten years imprisonment, Lovell and Alleyne to five years.
Chase, who was charged for having incited the crowd to riot, when from the
platform he had said: “tonight will be a funny day”, was sentenced to
imprisonment for nine months.23

The Labour Rebellion in Trinidad & Tobago

The report of the Wages Board, appointed by the Government of Trinidad &
Tobago in 1935, was a great disappointment to the workers. The members of
the Board had been required to draw up a Cost of Living Index and, possibly
as a result of the report, no legal minimum wage had been established. As
one observer commented, the Board “by using questionable indices for
assessing the real needs … , gave the impression that few workers were being
paid substandard wages”.24 Cipriani had signed the report and this, together
with other signs of his growing conservatism, had by 1936 caused most
workers to lose confidence in him and the Trinidad Labour Party.25

In September 1936 Uriah Butler, a former oilfield worker turned preacher

who was very popular with his fellow immigrants from Grenada, and who
had formerly been a supporter of the TWA, severed his relations with
Cipriani and launched his own organisation. On 19 June, 1937, after the
company had failed to answer his demands for wage increases, Butler called
a strike of oil workers at the Forest Reserve premises of Trinidad Leaseholds
Limited. A warrant was issued for Butler’s arrest but an attempt to arrest him
while he was addressing a public meeting was frustrated by the crowd. An
unpopular police corporal, part of the party attempting the arrest, was beaten,
soaked with paraffin and burned to death. Another policeman was also killed.
Butler went into hiding 26

Within two days of this event a strike had engulfed the oilfields. Strikes in
other industries and occupations soon followed and before long the entire
economy had been paralysed by a general strike. According to an editorial in
the Port Of Spain Gazette, it was a situation “which assumed a proportion
previously unknown in the history of labour agitation” in the colony. A state
of emergency was declared and two British warships were rushed to the
island, arriving on 22 and 23 June. Marines and sailors were landed and
thirteen police officers were brought in from England and two from Ireland.
In addition to the constabulary the local military forces – the Trinidad
Infantry Volunteers and the Trinidad Light Horse – were mobilised.
Numerous arrests and imprisonments followed, but Butler was not arrested
until September. He was subsequently tried and sentenced to two years
imprisonment for sedition.27

The attitude adopted by the Governor, Sir Murchison Fletcher, and the
Colonial Secretary, Howard Nankivel, contributed to the restoration of calm,
which had been restored by the end of July. Both had admitted publicly that
wages were too low and that the employers in the oil and sugar industries and
the Government had an obligation to ensure that workers were treated fairly
and properly remunerated. But the principal share-holders in these mainly
foreign owned industries were influential with Government circles in Britain
and very soon the Governor was forced to retire and the Colonial Secretary
was transferred to another colony.

The Labour Rebellion in Jamaica

In the first quarter of 1937 the growing unrest among peasants, many of
whom both farmed their own or rented plots of land and also worked part
time on larger properties, and landless agricultural workers, found
organisational expression in upper Clarendon in central Jamaica. Robert E
Rumble, a small farmer who had returned from Cuba where he had acquired
the trade of a coach builder and wheelwright, had formed an organisation
which he called the Poor Man’s Improvement and Land Settlement
Association. By March 1938 he claimed a membership of 800 for his
organisation. On 23 April 1938 this organisation addressed a Petition to the
Governor:

“We are the Sons of Slaves who have been paying rent to the Landlords for
fully many decades we want better wages, we have been exploited for years
and we are looking to you to help us. We want a Minimum Wage Law. We
want freedom in this the hundredth year of our Emancipation. We are still
economic slaves, burdened in paying rent to Landlords who are sucking out
our vitalities.”28

Agitation was conducted by Rumble and his organisation for land for the
peasants and proto-peasants and for better wages for agricultural workers. A
movement to refuse to pay any more rent to landlords began to spread and, in
some areas, land hungry people seized estate lands. This was fuelled by the
revival of a widely held belief that Queen Victoria had promised that, 100
years after their emancipation, the slaves who had got nothing at the time of
the abolition of slavery would inherit the land. Tenants and others who seized
lands began to erect fences and offered to pay taxes on the lands the
ownership of which they claimed to have acquired.29

At the end of December 1937 workers on Serge Island Estate in St Thomas,

at the eastern end of the island, refused to start reaping the crop at the rates of
pay offered. Police were rushed to the area and, on 4 January, 1938, they
reported that some 400 to 500 strikers had forced others to cease work. Sixty-
three of the strikers were arrested and, over a period of three days from 13
January, were tried before the Resident Magistrate. Three “ring-leaders” were
sentenced to one month’s imprisonment with hard labour, 7 were fined £2
and 11 were fined 21/- each with the alternative in default of payment of 30
and 21 days imprisonment respectively. 45 others were admonished and
discharged.30 These were relatively lenient sentences.

On 29 March, warned that dissatisfaction among the lowest paid manual

workers was assuming island-wide proportions, the Government announced
the appointment of a Commission to enquire into rates of wages and
conditions of employment of labourers in receipt of not more than thirty
shillings per week, its first session to be held on 11 April.31

During the first quarter of 1938, large numbers of workers had been
converging on Westmoreland at the western end of the island, attracted by the
possibility of employment. On 2 May the Daily Gleaner published this
report:

“One thousand labourers, a large proportion of them engaged on the erection

of a giant Central Sugar Factory at Frome Estate …went on strike Friday.
They are still out and state that they will only return to work when their
demand – one dollar [4/-] per day – is met by the West Indies Sugar
Company.”32

Next day the newspaper’s reporter on the spot reported:

“The old factory on the estate, which up to Friday had been grinding canes, is
entirely in the hands of the strikers … I hear rifle firing, followed by shrieks
and cries … I can see men on the ground. Some are motionless, others are
staggering to and fro or crawling away on their hands and knees. The strike
has culminated in stark tragedy. A few minutes later I hear that three are
dead, eleven wounded and that the police are making many arrests.”33

Four people were killed that day, three by police gunshot and one by a police
bayonet. On 4 May the Gleaner reported that “the known cases of persons
suffering from wounds has not exceeded twenty-five, the arrests up to
yesterday afternoon reached 96”.34 But the wounded may have been more
numerous as there was a widespread belief that anyone who sought medical
treatment would be thereby identifying himself as a participant and inviting
arrest. On 13 May the first batch of 27 of the 109 strikers arrested was rushed
to trial before the Resident Magistrate at Savanna la Mar, charged with
“riotous assembly”. The sentences ranged from 30 days to 1 year’s
imprisonment. At the same time the Governor appointed a Commission to
enquire into the disorders.

The events at Frome had an electrifying effect. There were demonstrations of

unemployed workers in Kingston, the capital. Waterfront workers in
Kingston put forward demands for wage increases and, at the end of the
second week of May, came out on strike. On 23 May many other workers in
the city struck work and work in the city came to a halt, all the major stores
were forced to put up their shutters by marching workers.

On 24 May, the Governor ordered the arrest of William Alexander

Bustamante, a popular figure who during recent months had been addressing
public protest meetings and writing letters to British Members of Parliament
revealing the distressing economic conditions prevailing in the island.35 The
arrest of Bustamante and his principal assistant St William Grant,36 and the
initial refusal to grant them bail, was a provocation which, despite the
appointment of an officially sponsored Conciliation Board on 26 May,
unleashed a wave of further strikes and riots.

A week later, realising that the only way to ease the situation was to release
Bustamante and Grant, the Government agreed to bail being granted. By that
time however the spirit of revolt had spread throughout the island and strikes
and demonstrations were occurring in every parish. This situation continued
for many weeks, despite the use of the battalion of British troops stationed on
the island to supplement the police. Workers were killed and injured and
many arrests took place.37

By the end of June calm had been restored. A number of factors had
contributed to this. Perhaps the most important had been the launching by
Bustamante of a trade union and assurances from him and the much respected
barrister N W Manley38 that the workers would receive proper
representation. The announcement on 14 June that a Royal Commission
would be arriving shortly to investigate conditions had undoubtedly created
expectations that improvements would be forthcoming. On 28 June Acting
Governor Woolley had announced in the Legislative Council that two loans
would be raised to finance land settlements and other infrastructural
developments.39

The Labour Rebellion Renewed in Guyana

The number of labour disputes in Guyana, which had declined to two in 1936
and four in 1937, rose sharply in 1938. Between January and September in
1938 there were over thirty disputes involving over 12,000 workers.40 But
none of these strikes was called by the Man Power Citizens Association, the
trade union which had been formed in 1936 and was organising field workers
in the sugar industry for the first time, but had not yet been recognised by the
Sugar Producers Association.

While the members of the West India Royal Commission (see below) were in
Guyana taking evidence in February 1939, a major strike broke out at
Plantation Leonora. The strike had started among the field workers but, on 16
February, between 70 and 100 strikers entered the factory and persuaded the
factory workers to leave. This operation had been peaceful, but when armed
police arrived shortly afterwards and arrested five of the strikers, they were
pelted with stones and a large crowd assembled at the entrance to the factory.
Other police guarding the manager’s house were also stoned.

The police drove the strikers back with fixed bayonets and a police car was
damaged and its occupants injured. The police fired on the crowd, killing
four and four others were admitted to hospital with bullet wounds. In all
twenty-three were injured. On 2 March 1939, in a move to diffuse the rising
discontent, the Sugar Producers Association agreed to recognise the MPCA
as the bargaining agent of the workers. The Government appointed a
Commission of Enquiry into the events that had occurred at Leonora.41

Islands Without Rebellions in the 1930s

Although the labour rebellions of the 1930s had swept like a wave across the
British colonies of the Caribbean region, there were some colonies in which
rebellions did not occur. Because of their very small size and the absence of
concentrations of workers either in urban centres or on plantations, no labour
rebellions occurred in the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the
Cayman Islands or the British Virgin Islands. There were also three islands –
Dominica, Grenada and Antigua – where, in the 1930s, although there were
plantations and distressing poverty existed, no labour rebellions occurred.
How is this to be explained?

A relevant factor in Dominica and Grenada may have been that in those
islands independent peasant farmers comprised a larger percentage of the
working population than in the other islands, but this was not the case in
Antigua. In Grenada a labour rebellion did subsequently occur but not until
1950-51, after the return to the island of Eric Gairy and Gascoigne Blaize
who had been working in the oil refinery in the Dutch colony of Aruba and
had been members of the Aruba Labour Union. What needs to be explained
in relation to Grenada therefore is not the absence of a rebellion but the time-
lag before it occured.

A Grenadian historian, recording the fact that no labour rebellion had

occurred at the time, offered this explanation:
“The Grenadian estate owners, the employers of agricultural labour, who
were spared these holocausts took heed of the saying “when your neighbours’
house is on fire, wet yours”. It was solely for this reason that there were
voluntary agreements and co-operation with the authorities whenever they
recommended a wage increase.”42

But there is no evidence that any such recommendations were made at this
time. A trade union had been formed in Grenada after this had become
legally possible there in 1933, but had not succeeded in attracting many
members. A possible, if speculative, factor contributing to the time-lag in the
outbreak of the rebellion may have been that the popular masses had greater
faith in the efficacy of political representations in Grenada then elsewhere.
Such an illusion may have been a by-product of the immense popularity and
reputation of T Albert Marryshow, Member of the Legislative Council,
whose orientation was entirely political.

The case of Antigua was entirely different to that of Grenada and Dominica.
Like the neighbouring island of St Kitts, Antigua in the 1930s was almost
entirely devoted to the production of sugar. But the clash between the
plantation owners and the workers did not develop there until 1951, by which
time the great majority of the workers were well organised and represented
by the Antigua Trades and Labour Union, an affiliate of the Caribbean
Labour Congress. The class conflict there took the form of a lock-out by the
employers and a general strike called by the Union which had reduced all
economic activity to a stand-still.

The deadlock was resolved when the colonial Government set up a

Commission of Enquiry at which both sides were represented by lawyers.
The Union’s representative was Richard Hart, Secretary of the Caribbean
Labour Congress, and Quintin O’Connor, a leading trade union official from
Trinidad, gave evidence on trade union practice and labour relations on
behalf of the Union. Although a tense situation developed when the Governor
had troops flown in from Jamaica and the Union withdrew from the Enquiry,
calm was restored two weeks later when the troops were withdrawn. The
proceedings were orderly and the situation could not be described, as in the
other colonies, as a labour rebellion.
The West India Royal Commission

The decision of the British Government to appoint the West India Royal
Commission was a response to the cumulative effect of the labour rebellions
in the region. The idea, which may have originated in the Colonial Office,
was proposed soon after it became known in London that the wave of social
explosions had reached Jamaica. It was discussed at a Cabinet meeting on 25
May, after which the Secretary of State for the Colonies gave a somewhat
cynical explanation of the purpose it would serve:

“An early announcement that a Royal Commission was to visit the Islands
would have a good psychological effect in these Colonies. It would tend to
reassure their people that we here are keenly interested in their affairs, and
anxious to do what we can to help, and it would therefore tend to calm
excited feelings there.”43

The proposal having been cleared with the Prime Minister and by him with
the King, West Indian Governors were informed of it on 13 June and it was
announced next day in the House of Commons.44 The Commissioners took
written and oral evidence in London and in the colonies after their arrival
there in November 1938 and made their report on 21 December 1939. By that
time however Britain was at war with Germany and the conditions of poverty
in the colonies which the report disclosed were so appalling that, to avoid the
possibility of its being used in enemy propaganda, its publication was
suppressed. At the time, only the recommendations of the Commissioners
were published.45

Conclusion

The labour rebellions of the 1930s increased the self confidence of the
workers in these colonies and convinced them of the influence they could
exert by united action. The principal immediate benefit that the workers
derived from the rebellions was that they forced upon the Royal Commission,
and through its recommendations the British Government, a realisation of the
need to bring trade union legislation in all the colonies into line with
legislation in Britain.
Trade Unions were made lawful in those colonies where they had previously
been unlawful. In all the colonies legislation was amended or introduced
making peaceful picketing of employers’ premises lawful and giving trade
unionists immunity from actions for breach of contract as a result of strikes.
The organisation of trade unions followed in all the colonies and the
foundations were laid for the modern trade union movements, which continue
to contribute to the struggle for an improved standard of living.

What occured in the 1930s was a series of spontaneous uncoordinated

uprisings. There had been no advance planning. Neither the leaders who
emerged nor the participants had had any premeditated conscious objectives.
Nor, during the course of the rebellions, did the workers or their leaders
develop any revolutionary demands, such as the expropriation of property,
the seizure of political power by the working class or the achievement of
political independence. But this does not in any way detract from the
historical significance of what had taken place.